


six metamorphoses after Rutledge

by izzybeth



Category: Mozart in the Jungle (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, no definitely for sure pretentious, possibly pretentious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:03:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzybeth/pseuds/izzybeth
Summary: Hailey Rutledge, six ways.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valkyrierising](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrierising/gifts).



> Title from "[Six Metamorphoses After Ovid](https://youtu.be/hLxWE_7XiWk?list=LLWhz7QlcPPuNpm2qIWNEE5w)" by Benjamin Britten, a piece with six movements for solo oboe. Each movement is named after a mythological figure appearing in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
> 
> Season 3 is out! I have not watched it (I only saw like two days before Yuletide was due) so this fic is canon compliant through Season 2.
> 
> Thank you to C for her amazing last minute beta work.

_Niobe, who, lamenting the death of her fourteen children, was turned into a mountain._

Betty had initially earned her place in the orchestra through the method of blind auditions. She had been one of the first women to remove her heels, pad across the stage floor, sit down behind a screen, and C.P.E. Bach her way to a professional career as an oboist in the New York Symphony. Getting her foot in the door had been the hard part. Conquering the old boys and making her way from fourth chair to principal had been delightful. Sacrificing her free time, her social life, her personal relationships, for the music? To be the best? Had been nothing.

She does not suffer vain, fresh from college, twenty-two year old dilettantes who are more interested in their romanticised imaginings than the reality of working in her orchestra.

So yeah, fine, Rutledge might not have actually boned Rodrigo, but she definitely had an in somewhere. A small part of Betty's brain reminds her that Rutledge is actually an incredibly talented oboist and a driven, dedicated musician and only lacks the experience she needs to perform on the professional level, but that voice is easy enough to drown out when Betty sees Rodrigo deliberately brush his fingers over Rutledge's when she hands him his maté. She is not imagining that.

It isn't as though Betty hasn't had her own musical dalliances, but Christ, at least she's been smart enough to stay away from the fucking conductors.

Rutledge comes to Betty's apartment every Saturday at six thirty in the morning. Sometimes she is exhausted, dark circles under her eyes; sometimes she's full of energy and smiling and lets Betty's comments slide right off her. But she's always there. Always. At the start, Betty had assumed Rutledge would give up, that the combination of the evil hour and Betty's deliberate nastiness and condescension would drive her away. But she's always there. Betty has to respect that. Sometimes she looks at Rutledge and wonders why she let herself become so cold. 

  


_Arethusa, who, flying from the love of Alpheus the river god, was turned into a fountain._

Her phone buzzes. _Amadeus._ Good lord. Cynthia is incredibly tempted to change the name to Salieri, but she isn't that cruel. Thomas had been so delightfully chilled out after his sojourn in Cuba, but now that Claire has left him and he is experiencing the neuroses of composition, he's become even more needy and desperate for her company.

Which… it isn't as though Cynthia doesn't love him. She does. But there's love, and there's familiarity. Seeing Thomas feels like performing Brandenburg Five for the fourteenth time. Comfortable. Habit. Bob had been a surprisingly good time, Nina even more so. Cynthia needs more of that. She is a world class cellist with a smoking hot body (if she may say so herself), and she deserves to enjoy herself. As does every woman in the symphony.

And it's nice to see Hailey finally letting her hair down and having a good time too. Cynthia can't fault her choice. Can't go wrong with a cellist. Of course, Walsh has a reputation, but Cynthia trusts Hailey to know how to take care of herself. When Hailey had told her about her night out, Cynthia had just laughed. Josh Bell is kind of a dick, but you know violinists, and Lang Lang is terribly charming.

Hailey is green enough to still have those stars in her eyes, though. Cynthia certainly doesn't begrudge her that, but she might envy it a little. It's a wonderful thing, to be enthusiastic, free, and on the brink of an undoubtedly brilliant career. Was Cynthia ever that young?

Cynthia silences her phone. 

  


_Bacchus, at whose feasts is heard the noise of gaggling women's tattling tongues and shouting out of boys._

Lizzie loves Hailey more than she loves most things. She loves Hailey more than she loves mojitos, more than she loves Shostakovich, more than she loves that amazing bar in Hanoi, or Queen, or brie.

(Well. Maybe not Queen. It's hard to love something more than Queen. Hailey would totally understand.)

Lizzie does not love Hailey's bad behaviors, though. Hailey's general neuroticism, her tendency toward uptight prudery, her fear of breaking any and all rules. In Lizzie's less charitable moments, she likes to think that when Hailey's not practicing she keeps her oboe stuck up her ass.

Sometimes Lizzie really hates Hailey's fucking oboe. The oboe gets in the way of a lot of stuff. It got between her and Alex; it gets between her and the maestro; and it pretty much has always, ever since she picked one up, got between Hailey and a goddamn life. Lizzie likes it when Hailey has a life. Hailey with a life is a good Hailey, a happy Hailey. Hailey compulsively sucking on reeds with her head in a score for three weeks straight is not a happy Hailey. It's also not a happy Lizzie.

(Honestly, how many times in a row can you play a two-measure Mahler phrase without losing your fucking mind? Apparently many. Many times.)

Rodrigo intrigues Lizzie. If he weren't clearly smitten with Hailey and she with him, Lizzie would be In There like a thing that is completely, one hundred percent, in another thing.

Maybe she should throw another bacchanal. Invite that flute-playing jag just to watch Hailey hand him his skinny ass at Spin The Bottle, and then attempt to avert her eyes when Rodrigo inevitably jumps her afterward. Like, sometimes Lizzie wants to jump her when the bottle lands on 'baroque'. That shit's awesome.

She has to admit that Hailey's been happier lately, after Andrew the cellist and Erik the cute orchestra board member. Clearly she just needs to get laid semi-regularly. Of course, that's advice Lizzie would give anyone, but Hailey especially.

But those are just flings, in Lizzie's well-informed opinion. Lizzie knows Hailey better than anyone in the entire fricking world, and Rodrigo is endgame. Lizzie ships it, the end. 

  


_Phaeton, who rode upon the chariot of the sun for one day and was hurled into the river Padus by a thunderbolt._

Who the fuck is he, anyway? Thomas Pembridge, _Maestro_ Thomas Pembridge. Emeritus just means dead, everyone knows that. And whatever the opposite of influential is. Uninfluential. Well, that's not very poetic, is it. Obscure. Insignificant. Yes, that's the one.

The classical music scene is a young man's game; clearly Thomas is no longer cut out for the political intrigue, late nights, swooning reviews and public adoration. The prestige. His orchestra.

Fuck.

Composing, all right, he might have had his head up his arse for a humiliatingly long time (and thank God Bradford was there to document the whole fucking process and upload it to the internet so no one will ever forget what a pretentious cock Thomas is), and he probably deserves everything he gets there (that being a lesson in humility). His symphony wasn't that bad, really. It might have ended up a murder weapon, but that's not a reflection on its quality; that's a reflection on Claire's dodgy ticker.

No, it killed a woman; it was clearly shite.

Goddamn it. He should never have let them take his orchestra away. 

Rutledge, now, classical music is clearly a young woman's game too. Can't hold a candle to his Constanza, but she'll do well enough. Especially if she can manage to knock Betty fucking Cragdale off her high horse. Anyway, you can't compare strings and woodwinds; it's like apples and kumquats. Cragdale's a flawless artist, Thomas conducted her for thirty-five years, but for those thirty-five years he's also watched her lose something of herself. Rutledge has it, _it,_ the thing Cragdale is lacking. 

  


_Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image and became a flower._

Not every decision Gloria has made has been without fault. She's vain, she knows it. Probably too often, she lets herself revel in it. Redecorating her office had been a mistake. What's done is done.

Putting Ms. Rutledge on the posters had been a good decision. A smart one. Sexy up the symphony a little (and God knows it's a better marketing campaign than 'hear the hair,' Jesus). Gloria can't remember a time when the symphony couldn't have used a facelift. And Ms. Rutledge was an excellent choice: good hair, good bone structure, possible (if unconfirmed) affair with Rodrigo; she was perfect.

Bringing back Gloria Antoinette is the best thing she's done in a decade. And not just because it led to Pavel. Music is Gloria's entire life. If she happens to be more valuable scrounging money and rubbing elbows with Bunnys and Mrs. Burlingames than she is at making her own damn music, well, that's just the way it is. Doesn't mean she isn't hot shit on a stage. She had been an idiot to let her ex make that decision for her.

Pavel had been a great, if spur of the moment, decision. Pavel is wonderful, sweet, thoughtful, interesting— well, she could go on. Gloria is going to have to be very cross with herself if it turns out she's fucked it up. 

  


_Pan, who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx, his beloved._

His feelings for Hailey are very different from his feelings for Anna Maria, though they can both be called love.

He did not know that his marriage with Anna Maria was dying until it was dead.

He calls her Jai Alai. It's so stupid. He can't let go of it. He doesn't want to let go of it.

He would have. In his old room, in his abuela's house. He would have and she would have, he knows it. On his dinosaur blanket, _delante de Jesús_ and everything. He wanted it. He still wants it. He wants her.

And it feels like she's slipping away from him because Mexico was a fantasy and it makes him want to scream in the street, but she deserves it. She deserves a good man, deserves to be more than fifth chair backup, more than his errand girl.

He wants to keep her. Perhaps she will not be kept. That's fine. That's good, really. Anna Maria would not be kept either. Perhaps he is fated to want women who will belong only to themselves.


End file.
